“Excuse me, Massa Smith, Cap’n, suh, what all is that?” Bart asked, bowing and scraping, and feeling no shame at abasing himself, since the quest was knowledge of what might be a marketable edible.
“Bananas, boy,” said the captain expansively. His own acquaintance with the fruit being recent, he had the initiate’s irrepressible desire to pass on information lately come by as if it were old knowledge.
“You eats it, Cap’n, suh?” Bart asked ingenuously. “I never see such on any stall.”
“You know where Honduras is, boy?” asked the captain, casting an amused look at Lawyer Smith.
“Nawsuh, Cap’n, suh.”
“It’s a heap of miles and a heap of ocean away. Bananas grow there on trees. And the trees grow in the jungles. And nigger natives climb them trees like monkeys.”
“You reckon,” Lawyer Smith interposed, his palate still relishing the rich fruit, “there’s money in bananas?”
“Hear tell of a Cap’n Baker, Boston way,” said the captain sententiously, “is starting to bring ’em in regular from Jamaica. Began about six or seven years ago. He was master of a schooner then, eighty-five tons or so. Used to fish winters, carry freight summers. Started making port at Jamaica and bringing bananas back to Boston.
“Wasn’t much steady demand for ’em. Trip took sixteen, seventeen days. Most of his cargo rotted on the way, and not many folks got to sample ’em. But this here Baker sees a future in bananas. Built himself a bigger ship more cargo space, more speed.
“Latest thing is he’s got some kind of setup in Jamaica and is loading other vessels along with his own to bring bananas back to Boston. Commission house sells ’em through a man name of Preston. Him and Baker are talking about forming some kind of consolidation to make bananas a year-round trade, ’stead of splitting it up with fish in winter.”
“They’d better stick to fishing,” said Lawyer Smith judiciously. “Everybody eats fish, and I don’t know another soul in this town but me a minute ago who ever put his teeth in a banana.”
Bart let his eyes roll around in his head. His tongue darted out and made a persuasive circle of his lips. “Please, Massa Smith, and Cap’n, suh, I sure would like to be the onliest black boy in this town to taste one.”
“Well, here you are,” said Lawyer Smith largely, stripping a finger from the cupped hand and tossing it across his desk.
Bart caught it deftly. “Thank you kindly, Massa.”
“Now be off with you,” said Lawyer Smith, removing the snowy napkin and beginning to uncover the savory dishes.
“Yes, suh!” said Bart, and scooted out, his humility falling away from him as he clattered down the stairs.
He saved his banana all day. When the last late diner had been fed, he walked two miles to the one-room cabin of Mr. Alonzo White, a black man of good education, who had been schooled with his delicate young master to satisfy the white lad’s whim. The lesson was geography at Bart’s request that he might trace the course from Boston to Jamaica and from Richmond to Boston. The lesson concluded, Bart paid the twenty-five cents that was Mr. White’s fee for an hour’s education, and walked slowly home, his mind afire with dreams.
He looked up at the stars. He believed that he had been born under one of the lucky ones, and that everything he touched would turn to money. In the darkness he walked with his head held back and feet slapping proudly on the dirt road. Some day he was going North to Boston. It was a long way from the South. White folks there weren’t apt to know too much about how black folks were used to being treated. Folks up North fought to make the South free. Stood to reason then that they wouldn’t want to treat any man anywhere as if he were a humble dog. In the North they respected money, whether it was white or black. You could look a man level in the eye and keep your hat on your head if you had as much cash on the line as he did.
When Bart reached home, he got his banana out of the kitchen safe and carried it to the table, where Mary sat rocking and resting and humming a paean to Jesus. Carefully he peeled the fruit, watching the petals fall away, revealing the delicate filament of their undersides. Mary bent forward to stare at the slender, golden-white spear. It was small and uncultivated, but firm-fleshed, and its heavy exotic odor struck some dormant stream of atavistic longing for the breast of jungle earth.
“Take a big bite, Mam,” Bart said generously, and held the fruit to her dreaming mouth.
She bit into it and chomped with delight. Bart’s square white teeth cut out a cylinder, and the taste ran down his throat like milk and melted butter and honey.
“Mam,” he said reverently, “I reckon this tastes like manna mus’ taste in heaven.”
All night he dreamed on his narrow bed of bananas and Boston and ships setting sail from Jamaica.
Now, staring out across Boston Harbor, he was troubled by his dream of the night before. He had dreamed that the Lucy Evelyn had foundered, and her cargo of thirty thousand stems had washed out of the hold and plunged heavily to the bottom of the sea. He had waked in a cold sweat, with the cries of drowning men in his ears, and his eyes still seeing the helpless ship and her sunken cargo.
He believed in his dreams. To him they were visions, and were the Lord’s way of making revelations. Still, the Lucy Evelyn was a stout ship, as were all the big banana boats that plied between the West Indies and Boston and Central America and New York and New Orleans under the charter of the Consolidated Fruit Company, bringing a prize crop of highly cultivated fruit from the banana plantations of the leveled jungles to the tables of North America all the seasons of the year.
The weather this morning was sunny and clear. There had been no reports of a storm sweeping up the Atlantic to force the Lucy Evelyn off her course. Her run was seven days or eight, and this was the morning of the eighth day. She had until sundown to keep within running time.
But on his way to the dock, Bart had detoured to the office of the Consolidated Fruit Company. He had barged in on their busy representatives, who had assured him that they had had no unfavorable word from the Lucy Evelyn, who would make port sometime that day as she had been doing, fair weather or foul, for ten years. Bart had not been reassured. The premonition was too strong in him. God was too surely signifying.
He believed in God. He believed in himself and he believed in God. There was constant communion between them, and he never doubted for a moment that God spent a lot of His time looking out for his interests. His conversion had come when he was seventeen, and his faith had deepened with the years of his prosperity. He rarely went to the South End church of his faith because Cleo would never go with him. The congregation was largely composed of transplanted Southerners, hard-working simple worshipers, who broadly hinted, to Bart’s embarrassment, that his wife considered herself too good for them. He was a shouting Baptist, and Cleo thoroughly disapproved. She had never felt the spirit, and he supposed she never would. Her Episcopalian friends were persuading her to their wishy-washy way of worship. They really believed you could get to heaven without any shouting.
He remembered how his mother had worried until he wrestled with the Devil. Their blessings had increased beyond her greatest expectations. They owned a home and a horse and buggy. Their restaurant employed five in help. Fried chicken was their specialty, and they catered to supper parties. Mary’s mattress was lined with money. She spent most of her free time on her knees, thanking God for His generosity.
She did not think Bart gave God enough credit. Bart couldn’t see where God figured